Considering a career change to being a teaching assistant

[Eileen101]

I'm becoming demotivated in my current career and have a perhaps idealistic vision of a career change to be a teaching assistant. I have thoughts that I'd much rather be doing things like listening to children read, helping groups of kids, sorting reading books, etc etc. In my vision (possibly completely naively) it's fairly low stress, fun and gives the warm fuzzy feeling of having a job that genuinely helps people.

I'm aware that this is probably not true.

If you're a teaching assistant, can you give me a warts and all account of your role? Do you love it? Do you hate it? Is it as stressful as being a teacher?
I'm aware the pay is low, particularly as I would not have education related qualifications.

I am a TA and love my job. I am in class in the mornings to support with English and maths and I deliver interventions in the afternoons. I also work lunchtimes. I plan my own interventions which I do in my own time at home. As a previous poster mentioned I have to keep detailed records of the interventions as I am measured against targets set for each child I work with. I very rarely get involved with putting up displays or reading with the children. For this I get paid just over £1k per month and as I am at the top of the pay scale I have not had a pay rise in 3 years despite meeting all my targets. Despite the poor pay, I do this job because I like it, it’s convenient to home and I get to have all the school holidays off to be with my own children. I have to say that I am lucky to work in a school where the children respect all the adults and know that we all have the same authority. The head and slt set the tone of school and it is important that the children see that all adults are equal and are respected. I have the same authority to discipline the children as any of the teachers and I know that they will back me up if needed. We all follow the same behaviour policy and the children know this. As a result we have a very good reputation in our local area for behaviour management and it is very noticeable when we go on school trips as our children are very well behaved in comparison to some other schools where the children are feral and the adults seem to have no control over them at all. If you do take the plunge go into it with your eyes open and choose the school carefully.

Also 13 weeks holiday is fantastic when you have kids. But often TA roles are pro rata so you’ll only get paid for the statutory 5 ( obviously you get paid every month - just less)
Plus they are always the most expensive weeks for going away. Great if you have somewhere to go for 6 weeks in the summer. Less so if you can’t afford to be away. And as your “perk” you really need to make the most of it .
Do you really want a week off at the end of October or middle of February. Or would you rather have 10 days leave you can make 5 long weekends with? And all the bank holidays are included in school holidays.

Just for a different perspective, I have no experience of working in state schools but I was a TA at a pre-prep in a reception class. £27k actual, 2 week half terms, 4 weeks off for Christmas and Easter, 10 weeks off in the summer, only 18 children in the class. The school paid for me to go on CPD courses I was interested in (e.g. continuous provision, outdoor learning in EYFS). I was a key worker for 9 children and did SEN interventions, break duties, PPA cover, small group work, exra-curricular clubs etc too. Absolutely loved it but left to gain a professional qualification.

And I didn't find it stressful - but I always left by 4pm with no work to take home, I got on really well with my class teacher and the head of EYFS, had a manageable workload and I felt well-respected by the other staff and the children.

Fascinating reading everyone, thank you. Definitely food for thought.
It'd definitely be primary.
The low pay is noted, I'm fortunate not to be the breadwinner in our family.

I wouldn’t say it was much of a ‘career’-there is certainly very little in the way of career progression and no essential qualifications.

Our TAs are brilliant, but I definitely wouldn’t say it was a low stress role-they never sit still. The things you mention don’t really happen in the way you describe either. Our TAs don’t do much in the way of hearing 1:1 readers-that’s done by parent volunteers, ours hear group reading groups of 6/8 children which focus on comprehension, inference, information retrieval etc which all has to planned for and written up. The children change their books themselves, so the TA doesn’t do that either. Ours are pretty much teaching small sets, but are getting paid an absolute pittance.

If you can deal with:
the low pay
complete inflexibility re: any time off during the term (including medical appointments/ holidays / any DC school appointments)
No breaks during the day

Good Luck!

It used to be a lovely job until about 10 years ago. Since then, you've increasingly been expected to do a lot of things that should be a teacher's job, but without the pay, status or security (most TA jobs in my region are fixed-term or temporary). They even have the sheer cheek to expect teaching assistants to plan short lessons at interview stage now- well at least before the pandemic anyway.

If you think it's low stress, you really are being naive., most definitely isn't. I was a TA for years, now a Cover Supervisor and being a TA is not an easy job at all.

I am looking to move into being a TA. Does anyone happen to know the avg pay in Wales?

I’m HLTA and love it, but am paid nowhere near enough for the amount of responsibility I’m given. Doing regular teaching keeps it interesting and the days are full on, but even a full time ta is still part time. It’s great if it’s not a main income and you want something interesting.

I work closely with 4 TAs in my teaching role, this is due to significant needs in my class.

One takes small groups almost constantly: maths and English. She feeds back to me and I adjust the work set accordingly. When she’s actually in my room, it will be checking online learning tasks from children who are I’ll or on limited timetables due to mental or physical health needs.

Two are 1:1 with the same child, a cross-over at lunch due to the dangers involved with swallowing food. They will do everything from playtime to swimming to personal care- including helping with toileting (child is not young).

Today we have dealt with a fight, a runner, a disclosure about home life. We’ve provided support for ye6 who didn’t get their first choices of high school. She’s checked in on non-attenders and supported an ICT lesson.

I couldn’t tell you the last time she “heard some readers”!

I’ve been a TA for 6 years in two very different schools and it varies from class to class. I’ve had teachers expect me to be in at 8 and stay until gone 4 when I’m only paid from 8.35-3.35 and expecting me to mark during lunch. I mentioned this to the teacher and how unfair that is and she has accepted it. Other TA’s arrive at 7.30 and stay until 4 for free and she expected me too.

We get on great now, but it was awkward for a bit. It is stressful, much more so than when I worked in banking. I still have to plan, prepare, mark and file any work for my daily groups. I don’t get additional time, so have to grab any spare minutes during the day (which are very few) or take it home…

My teacher is away so I’m covering for the week and have already covered for 2 weeks during this academic year. We don’t get any extra money even though I have to be in earlier to set up and prepare and stay later to sort the classroom out. I haven’t even had a thanks, it’s just expected. I’ve nearly had a 5 minute break today as there’s so much to do.

I love the class, but it’s both mentally and physically tiring. There are 2 TA’s in my class and we alternate every hour with a 1-1 child, which on a day when they’re not coping you feel like a failure even though you’re doing your best.

The money is awful but the holidays make up for it.

I’m in nursery and they are very cute, always tell me funny things and always give me lots of their treasures. Today a girl ripped a leaf into the shape of a heart at playtime and gave it to me as she said she loves me and I’m the best. As it’s nursery, we have quite a few wee and poo accidents to deal with. It’s never a dull moment and you can’t predict what’ll happen next.

I love working with the kids and to look back at September and see the improvement is so rewarding. Seeing children acting out a story I’d read to them and singing songs we’ve sung together.

I’ve also been pushed, punched, kicked, scratched and groped.

It’s not all hearing kids read, changing books and sharpening pencils.

There’s so much work to get through and lots of interventions. I’ve created resources for my 1-1 that’s relevant to his interests and targets then there’s social and emotional interventions. Then we have writedance, rwi, wellcomm and maths interventions to be done daily. We’re performances managed and have to account for everything we do, there are learning walks regularly when SLT frantically write every detail whilst staring at you for up to an hour. It’s exhausting!

I’ll stay as a TA until my child leaves school.

It was great until they stopped saying there needed to be a qualified teacher doing certain jobs/ in the room.

Then the TA was expected to do more!

Its incredibly hard to get a job as a TA. There is so much competition for jobs. I did an NVQ a few years ago and there were no jobs in the school I did my placement in. So I applied to many other schools. I know at least two roles were given to unqualified people who had volunteered in the school for months. One teacher friend suggested I find the same route in through volunteering but I didn't have the luxury of not earning.
Looking back I'm glad..I retrained in a much more lucrative field and I'm still helping people.

The teaching assistants that I work with always look stressed to fuck

@RabbitBeaver

Why does a nursery have a teacher and TAs? Never heard of this before!

It’s a nursery class in a school. Ratio is 1:13 for a teacher and 1:8 for a level 3 TA and then we have a 1:1 so 3 staff are needed. We have 24 kids so technically we need another member of staff too.

As the teacher’s away it’s just us 2 TA’s to cover, so I’m doing the majority of the teaching and the other TA is with the 1:1 child.

@RabbitBeaver

Blimey that sounds tough, bet you are mentally and physically shattered by the end of the day!

Ha, that's what I thought being a TA might be too. In reality I've never been near the photocopier or the book shelf, or a reading group. We are all with challenging 1:1's - all of us of which there are less of us than dc that need 1:1 at any one time. Mine is at least rarely violent (but not never). Don't get me wrong I enjoy it and the fronds I've made are great, the holidays and hours work well for me as a single parent but stress free it is not. The wages don't reflect the amount of work put in in any way

It just makes me so, so angry the sheer expectation that is often involved from schools, as evidenced by what RabbitBeaver says. What other job would expect 2 hours free work every day from workers earning on or below the minimum wage?
And they know they can get away with it, because they have lots of apprentices or even volunteers that can and will step into the breach. God knows why!

Yep, we breathe a sigh of relief after the last kid has gone home, which is normally around 20 minutes later than it should be. People think nursery is all play and whilst we learn through play the children have also learnt a new phonics sound, drew a story make and then retold the story, learnt how to use a 5 frame and learnt about syllables in their name and how to use a bench in p.e. That’s all in 1 day.

@RabbitBeaver are you in the uk? Things like maths interventions doesn't sound like anything I've known happen here

I’m a qualified KS3-5 teacher but worked as a primary TA for 3 years when my DC were small. I was mostly in Yr6 with a fantastic teacher who gave me lots of work with small groups and let me get on with it. The head also gave me lots of maths groups across the age range and then I covered the teachers’ PPA before going back to secondary teaching.

Good points are you get the fun bits of teaching without the hours of marking, planning, moderation etc that probably varies according to the school and your experience though. You get to know the children better (not always a plus- green forms a-go-go some days 🙄 ).

Bad things are the money, standing in the playground in the freezing cold everyday, being subordinate to (some) teachers who know a lot less and treat you like you must be dim because you’re ‘only’ a TA.

It’s not a bad job on the whole, you get good holidays, it suited me at the time- but being condescended to by the Science Lead who corrected me in the staff room to say that the moon glowed and stars reflect its light (the bloody nursery teacher set her straight ffs) and a slew of dead & rotting birds to clean up on the playground (the caretaker didn’t like doing it) did for me and sent me running back to teaching.

Yes I’m in the UK and maths interventions are daily. The ability range in nursery is massive. From kids that can recognise and write numbers to 100 and to those that can count to 3 but can’t recognise the numbers. We need to get them all to count to 10 and recognise the numbers. We need boosting interventions or they’d never get the exposure and it wouldn’t stick. We already do lots of maths, like counting aloud in the line, counting during registration and break times. Counting whilst singing nursery rhymes and during the actual lessons.